House of Glass

Detective Garcia stops by Stella’s apartment. She has Stella’s mother’s court records and offers to take over Stella’s investigation. Stella thanks her for the help but declines the offer. She tells Garcia about her interest in the fact that Beth transferred from Yale to Hamilton (an odd, downward trajectory). Garcia offers to look into it, suspecting that Beth was expelled or was avoiding an unpleasant incident of some kind. Stella accepts this particular offer. There is a palpable sexual tension in the air that surprises Stella, who has never been attracted to a woman before. She cannot decide whether Garcia is putting out romantic signals.

Stella examines her mother’s arrest record. Her mother was arrested for having a small amount of heroin but was belligerent with the officers and taken to jail immediately. She called her defense lawyer, Charles Huxley. Stella is stunned to realize that Charles must have known who she was when they first met. Now, she realizes that he might have also engineered their first meeting. She understands that he has been lying to her all these years and wonders if he was the man whose voice she heard in the apartment on the night her mother died. She resolves to confront him in person.

Charles readily admits to having known Stella’s mother. He was her attorney and was also a casual heroin user; he and Stella’s mother had used heroin together. Now, he tells Stella that he had feelings for her mother and wanted to save her. On the night she died, she called him and he came over, but when he tried to kiss her, she told him that she could never love anyone again after the death of her husband. Shamed, he left. He only found out about Stella later and decided that he could try to save her instead. He anonymously arranged for Stella to attend a special camp for grieving children, and he advocated for her at school and gave her the briefcase of money in the hopes that either she would use it or it would give the two of them a chance to meet. As Stella grew up, he judged that it was too late to tell her the truth, but he has only ever wanted to help her. Stella is stunned. As the two sit talking, her phone rings. The name on the caller ID is Tina de la Cruz.

The phone call is muffled, but Stella can hear Harriet, Beth, and Ian talking. She assumes that Rose called her and left the phone somewhere that would allow Stella to overhear their conversation. She learns that they have read her report and plan to call off their divorce in order to prevent Rose from being sent back to school and to a new therapist. She also learns they plan to start drugging Rose with Valium until they feel that her violent impulses are under control.

Stella heads to the Barclay home, calling Charles along the way to tell him to call Detective Garcia in an hour if he has not heard from her. She is still upset with him, but she is more concerned with Rose. Harriet lets her in. Stella has no idea whether she has put herself in danger by coming. Rose could have called because she genuinely wanted help or because she was setting Stella up.

Harriet tells Stella that Rose is sick, but Stella insists on seeing Rose. Harriet takes her to Rose’s room. Rose appears to be sleeping, but at the last moment, when Harriet’s view of her is blocked, she opens her eyes and stares directly at Stella.

Stella and Harriet go back downstairs and talk. Harriet tells Stella that Ian and Beth are getting back together. She is beaming as she shares the news, and Stella cannot help but recall how judgmentally Harriet spoke of Ian in their previous conversations. She had given Stella the impression that she did not think her ex-husband or her son were capable of changing their “wicked ways.” Stella also begins to realize that Harriet must have been aware of Ian’s affair. The house has very thin walls, and Harriet is an observant woman. It dawns on Stella that Harriet may have killed Tina; the evil presence in the house had always been Harriet, not Rose.

Harriet offers Stella a glass of wine, and Stella accepts. She does not want to take her eyes off Harriet, and the two proceed slowly into the kitchen. Harriet pulls a bulky, gun-like object from the pocket of her sweatshirt and asks when Stella figured it out. Stella tries to stall, but Harriet keeps talking. She denies killing Tina, but she does admit to being in the room when the girl fell. She tells Stella that she cannot let her go to the police. She forces her into the elevator that leads down to her floor and tases Stella just as she enters it.

Stella regains consciousness in Harriet’s room. She feigns immobility when Harriet prods at her with her cane and then swiftly reaches up and slams the cane into Harriet’s face. She runs up the spiral staircase that leads to the first floor. She finds Rose in her room and tells her that she knows that Harriet has been “being bad.” She tells Rose to hide and to come out only when she hears her parents and then tell them everything. Rose hides in the closet. Stella notices Tina’s phone on the floor and hopes that Rose will be able to phone the police. She turns around and sees Harriet running toward her, realizing that Harriet has been faking her leg injury. Harriet did not see Rose enter her hiding spot. Stella turns around to face her.

Stella accuses Harriet of casting suspicion on Rose. She remembers Harriet’s cryptic comments to her about Rose and realizes that it was probably at her suggestion that the family replaced all the glass in the house with plastic. She is horrified that Harriet has mistreated Rose to divert blame from herself for Tina’s death. Rose flies out of the closet and pushes Harriet. Stella urges Rose to flee the house, and the two try to make it to the edge of the property, where Stella knows that Ian is having a bonfire. Harriet is close on their heels. At one point, Harriet is close enough to swing her cane at Stella, who realizes that this is likely how Tina died, as Harriet admits to eavesdropping on Tina’s phone call. Stella realizes that Harriet heard Tina tell her friend that she was pregnant and then swung her cane at Tina. Tina tried to dodge it and fell out the window.

Stella and Rose escape from Harriet and make their way back to the house. Ian follows soon after with Harriet. Stella calls the police, explaining that Harriet killed Tina and hurt her. The scene is chaotic. Harriet and Stella both tell Ian conflicting stories, and at first, he believes Harriet because she is his mother. However, when Harriet suggests putting Rose to bed, Rose begins screaming in terror, and Ian realizes that Stella is telling the truth.

After the police arrive, Stella is able to speak with Ian and Beth. The truth is finally out; Harriet has implicated Rose in many small ways, and because Rose was gathering weapons, Beth and Ian believed that she was a killer. They love their daughter fiercely and wanted to shield her from prosecution, which Harriet assured them was a possibility even for a minor. Now that they understand that Rose was aware of Harriet’s guilt in Tina’s death, they realize that Rose was gathering weapons to protect herself from her grandmother. Both Detective Garcia and Charles show up at the scene. Harriet is touched to see them there and feels Charles’s fatherly love for her.

One month later, Stella visits the Barclays. Beth has purchased two new homes in the same area, one for her and one for Ian. The two have joint custody of Rose, who is now in school and therapy. Stella thinks that Rose will eventually recover from her trauma. Beth and Ian explain that Harriet also tried to poison Rose’s mind against Stella and that Harriet was the cause of all of the eerie disturbances that Tina and Stella blamed on Rose: the police phone calls, the missing objects, and the strange noises in the house. Harriet was terrified that Stella’s report would rob her of her home; Harriet grew up without much money and was thrilled to move in with Ian and Beth. She faked her leg injury so that they would let her stay, and she was furious with Ian for imperiling their lives together with his affair. She did not want to return to her old life.

Stella meets with Charles, who reveals that he was also involved in her father’s fatal crash. Although he’d been under the legal limit, he was drinking on that night. Both he and Stella’s father were rushing through a blind curve, and their cars collided. Charges were never filed, but he felt terrible. He befriended Stella’s mother and promised to help her in any way he could. Consumed by guilt and grief, he began drinking even more heavily and started to dabble in drug use. The only thing that had kept him going was trying to save Stella. Tearfully, she tells him that he succeeded.

Stella was not imagining the chemistry with Detective Garcia, and the two begin dating. Garcia fills in a few of the missing pieces for Stella over drinks one night. Harriet was indeed behind all the strange events in the home. Harriet had tracked Rose’s and Tina’s movements with tracking devices and monitored Tina’s living space and phone calls with cameras. She masterminded these details to remain in the Barclay home, and she killed Tina in hopes of preventing a divorce. She also tried to get rid of Stella when it became clear that her report might allow Rose to receive therapy and obtain normalcy; Harriet knew that there was a risk that Rose would reveal her guilt in Tina’s death.

Stella decides to return to therapy to fully process her childhood trauma and move on.